Is that a Canadian flag?

My husband and I were walking down one of the small side streets leading away from our hotel towards I can't remember what when he says "Did you just see a Canadian flag?"

It was shortly after we had arrived in Paris so my brain was still rather fuzzy.

We backed up a few steps to see a small alley way off to the left. And yes, sure enough, there was a Canadian flag.

Intrigued, we walked down the very narrow street only to discover AB Bookshop / Librairie Canadienne (29, rue de la Parcheminerie). I highly recommended a trip inside.

On Friday, I popped in to see what they had to offer. I left after nearly an hour of searching the children's schedule with a Caillou book, an english version of a Babar book and of course, a book on hockey (The Moccasin Goalie). It was all I could do not to buy the beautiful copy of "The Hockey Sweater" but I resisted.

Yes, I could have bought the same books from Amazon for probably less money, but there is something unique and patriotic about supporting a fellow countryman abroad.

Welcome to the MOULIN ROUGE! pt. 2

We arrived at the Moulin Rouge, only to be asked about a dozen times if we had a reservation. Yes, we did, we answered every time.

I had to surrender my camera to the coat check because no photos are allowed. Fine.

We were guided to our seats, which weren't very good. We were at the far left of the stage and really couldn't see much.

Other guests had come to enjoy dinner and the show. They were being entertained by a warm up act. Those tickets were twice what we paid.

After a couple of minutes and speaking to the waiter to tried to take our drink order, we realized that we were in the wrong spot. We were quickly moved up to the upper and cheaper sections. We were more than happy to go as those seats were far better than where we had originally been seated.

Now, there were some who sat near us, who weren't too happy to have to seat is what they believed to be the nose bleeds. We tried to explain that these were pretty good seats considering it was Paris on a Friday night. We had not doubt that the really good seats had been sold out for weeks.

The show was amazing. Yes, there was a lot of boobs. It was the Moulin Rouge for pete's sake. But the performances were really good and between the acts, we were treated to a couple of variety acts which were far superior to warm up act who did a very bad rendition of Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton's Islands in the Stream.

Was it worth 180€ (about 270$US)? It was something that is synonomus with Paris, so it was. Would I go back? Not likely.

Welcome to the MOULIN ROUGE! pt. 1

Unfortunately, we would not be enterained by Ewan McGregor...damn I'd pay to see that! Just kidding, okay maybe not.

My husband decided he wanted to head over to Montmartre early (around 4pm) so that we could have an early dinner and head to the Moulin Rouge for 8:30-ish because we had only reserved the tickets and he wasn't totally certain of the procedure to be seated etc.

We had to find a quiet place to sit down to call home and see how things were going so we found a bench in the Montmartre Cemetary. Charming, right? Actually it was. It ressembled the cemetaries I've seen from New Orleans where you just have above ground family mausoleums, at least in the section we were in.

We called home and of course, all was well. T didn't miss us at all. Mind you, the grandparents kept her very busy with outings, puzzles, colouring and reading lots of books. I can't forget the trips to the park.

We decided to try to find a place for a snack, so we grabbed a beer at Corcoran's before heading off in search of a baguette to tide us over until we could find a restaurant that was open early for dinner (remember the French eat dinner much later than us North Americans generally do).

We knew from our Sacre Coeur adventure that if we headed east of the Moulin Rouge, there wasn't much else aside from a lot of sex shops and they don't sell the types of baguettes we were looking for.

We walked and walked and found nothing. Finally we opted to try a grocertia and found a baguette. We headed back down the street back to the area near the Moulin Rouge and grabbed dinner.

About this time last year, my husband was sent to Toulouse for business. There, he came across a meal called Entrecote. Basically, its a beef dish made from the meat found between the ribs of the cow. He kept saying I needed to try it however the opportunity didn't really present itself until Friday night.

We ordered from the formules available. One of the items my husband ordered the foie gras. It was something I wanted to try and will likely never eat again. I got to try French Onion soup in France (it was much better than a lot of versions I've had) and the entrecote. The beef was decent enough but not something I would rush out to have again.

So finally we were off to see the Moulin Rouge.

Porte de l'Arsenal

By Friday, we needed a quiet day. We had played tourist really hard the first few days and now we started to really feel it.

We had booked tickets for the Moulin Rouge Friday night so my husband wanted to take it slow. He wanted to walk over to the Bastille monument and then walk back. He wanted a quick rest and then get dressed for the night in Montmartre.

We headed over the Bastille. There really isn't much to see, save for a monument. It seems the French like their fountains and their remembrances of days gone by.

We ended up walking along a part called the Porte de l'Arsenal. It was a very calm place with a few pigeons, boats and a small garden. A quiet place for a quiet day.